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Facial Recognition Is Accurate, if You’re a White Guy
The New York Times ^ | 09 Feb 2018 | Steve Lohr

Posted on 02/10/2018 8:38:58 PM PST by Theoria

Facial recognition technology is improving by leaps and bounds. Some commercial software can now tell the gender of a person in a photograph.

When the person in the photo is a white man, the software is right 99 percent of the time.

But the darker the skin, the more errors arise — up to nearly 35 percent for images of darker skinned women, according to a new study that breaks fresh ground by measuring how the technology works on people of different races and gender.

These disparate results, calculated by Joy Buolamwini, a researcher at the M.I.T. Media Lab, show how some of the biases in the real world can seep into artificial intelligence, the computer systems that inform facial recognition.

In modern artificial intelligence, data rules. A.I. software is only as smart as the data used to train it. If there are many more white men than black women in the system, it will be worse at identifying the black women.

One widely used facial-recognition data set was estimated to be more than 75 percent male and more than 80 percent white, according to another research study.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Computers/Internet; Society
KEYWORDS: ai; bigbrother; facialrecognition; software; whitey; youpplalllookalike
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To: pepsionice
It’s a good thing that most criminals are white guys,

Absolute truth, all those alarm company commercials seem to back that up!

21 posted on 02/10/2018 9:12:05 PM PST by doorgunner69 (Give me the liberty to take care of my own security..........)
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To: Theoria

Black privilege.


22 posted on 02/10/2018 9:13:22 PM PST by OrangeHoof (Donald Trump: Doing the work American politicians just won't do.)
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To: Theoria

So are they saying all you have to do is darken your skin in some way to get past this?


23 posted on 02/10/2018 9:29:54 PM PST by Trillian
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

LOL I see Internet Memes being created shortly...


24 posted on 02/10/2018 10:01:30 PM PST by rlmorel (Leftists: American Liberty is the egg that requires breaking to make their Utopian omelette.)
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To: doorgunner69

I knew this would be an interesting thread...:)


25 posted on 02/10/2018 10:02:35 PM PST by rlmorel (Leftists: American Liberty is the egg that requires breaking to make their Utopian omelette.)
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To: Theoria

All WHITE GUYS look the same...

Duuh !


26 posted on 02/10/2018 10:13:57 PM PST by RedMonqey (Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?)
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To: Theoria

Technology again proving that common sense is not racist: darker subjects are harder to identify. There’s a reason why thieves dress in dark colors and prefer to operate at night.


27 posted on 02/10/2018 10:32:29 PM PST by MountainWalker
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To: Trillian

And werar the Groucho glasses mask. mustache and nose


28 posted on 02/10/2018 10:50:44 PM PST by Dr. Bogus Pachysandra (Don't touch that thing! Don't let anybody touch that thing!I'm a doctor and I won't touch that thing)
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To: Theoria

Or you could calibrate the cameras differently, no?

How about using IR to “light up” the subject?

But then some lighter skinned subjects might “disappear” (not register) and that would be “racist profiling”...


29 posted on 02/10/2018 10:51:40 PM PST by a fool in paradise (Ask a lib if Alger Hiss colluded with the Russians.)
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To: Theoria

Good for us then. Must suck to be not us.


30 posted on 02/10/2018 10:54:07 PM PST by chris37 (Take a week off racist >;-)
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To: Mears

They’ve been saying it.

https://gizmodo.com/5431190/hp-face-tracking-webcams-dont-recognize-black-people
HP Face-Tracking Webcams Don’t Recognize Black People
Adam Frucci
12/21/09 10:00am

How is it even “news” at this point?

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603996/the-fbis-facial-recognition-program-is-sprawling-and-inaccurate/
Around half of all adult Americans are on the agency’s image database, and its software is incorrect 15 percent of the time.
by Jamie Condliffe March 27, 2017

Last year, we learned about the remarkable scale of the FBI’s facial-recognition technology, with its access to nearly 412 million photos—many originating from sources unrelated to crime, such as ID documents. The intelligence agency has been trying to create a system that can accurately identify criminals in, say, CCTV footage—though it wasn’t then known how well the bureau’s software worked, nor whether it actually improved investigations.

Now, we have at least a little more insight into the program. The Guardian reports that a House oversight committee hearing last week revealed some interesting new details about the proliferation and abilities of the FBI’s facial-recognition systems.

First, there is a very good chance that you, as an American, appear within the database. Among those many millions of photos, it turns out, are the likenesses of around half the country’s adult population. That’s possible because images that are derived from sources unrelated to crime account for 80 percent of the database. So when you send off forms and pictures for a passport, driver’s license, or some other official identification, you’re likely helping grow the data set...

...The software also appears to incorrectly identify black people more frequently than it does white people. Sadly, that effect is predictable: we’ve explained in the past that facial-recognition systems are inherently biased because they’re trained on data sets that underrepresent some demographics.

But that problem can have troubling consequences. As the Guardian notes, black people are more likely to have facial-recognition software used to identify them, so it seems strange—unfair even—to use tools that are clearly ill-equipped to discern their likeness...

https://www.fastcompany.com/3065778/baidu-says-new-face-recognition-can-replace-checking-ids-or-tickets
11.17.16MIND AND MACHINE
Baidu Says Its New Face Recognition Tech Is Better Than Humans At Checking IDs
China’s Baidu claims new tricks for finding and reading faces are more accurate than humans and the fastest way to verify who someone is.

“When I go to a Broadway show, I’m not very happy that scalpers have bought up all the tickets,” says Andrew Ng, chief scientist of Baidu Research, the Silicon Valley branch of the tech company often described as the Google of China. Baidu has proposed a new artificial intelligence solution not only to thwart scalpers but to speed up the wait at any place where checking tickets or IDs leads to long lines. Today the tech giant announced new face recognition technology that it says is up to 99.77% accurate—able to distinguish people even better than a human can...


31 posted on 02/10/2018 11:00:01 PM PST by a fool in paradise (Ask a lib if Alger Hiss colluded with the Russians.)
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To: Delta 21

In China (where there are a billion+ Chinese people to put in the system) there is a boasted 99.77% success rate.

But yes, in the west, less success with Asian faces in addition to black faces.


32 posted on 02/10/2018 11:02:20 PM PST by a fool in paradise (Ask a lib if Alger Hiss colluded with the Russians.)
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To: MountainWalker

>>There’s a reason why thieves dress in dark colors and prefer to operate at night.

I thought it was because they were moonlighting


33 posted on 02/10/2018 11:04:27 PM PST by a fool in paradise (Ask a lib if Alger Hiss colluded with the Russians.)
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To: Theoria

I call BS.


34 posted on 02/10/2018 11:07:09 PM PST by Crucial
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To: Dr. Bogus Pachysandra

35 posted on 02/10/2018 11:13:49 PM PST by a fool in paradise (Ask a lib if Alger Hiss colluded with the Russians.)
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To: Theoria

Pretty Fly for a White Guy...


36 posted on 02/10/2018 11:25:51 PM PST by W. (.44 Magnum. No further questions needed.)
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To: shibumi

OMG, it was said.

:D


37 posted on 02/10/2018 11:34:50 PM PST by Salamander (And Ezekiel Smiles Again....)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
I foresee the widespread use of black face in the future.

In Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", when fleeing from the Lunar Authority, Wyoming Knott, changed herself from a bombshell blonde babe to a beautiful black woman à la John Howard Griffin, nasal inserts and all. And yes, there was a reference to the question "why not" and Mannie did.

TANSTAAFL!

38 posted on 02/10/2018 11:38:07 PM PST by higgmeister ( In the Shadow of The Big Chicken)
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To: a fool in paradise; All
First, there is a very good chance that you, as an American, appear within the database. Among those many millions of photos, it turns out, are the likenesses of around half the country’s adult population. That’s possible because images that are derived from sources unrelated to crime account for 80 percent of the database. So when you send off forms and pictures for a passport, driver’s license, or some other official identification, you’re likely helping grow the data set...

I suspect the good chance grows exponentially for us near or over twenty year Freepers.

39 posted on 02/10/2018 11:48:38 PM PST by higgmeister ( In the Shadow of The Big Chicken)
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To: Salamander

Must have both heard the voice of the Zeitgeist.


40 posted on 02/10/2018 11:51:22 PM PST by shibumi (Cover it with gas and set it on fire.)
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